Chapter 62
SIXTY-TWO
The police had left the previous evening, but Sergeant Dickinson had given Kate her phone number. Kate called her and read the contents of the latest note aloud, her voice shaking despite her efforts to control it.
‘This must be something the police can follow up now, isn’t it?’ she added. ‘I mean, it’s clearly a death threat. Not to mention the other stuff.’
The sergeant sighed. ‘Send me a photo of it and I’ll pass it on to a detective.
But, honestly? I know it’s horrible to be on the receiving end of something like this, but the police are shown similar material all the time.
Mostly online, admittedly, but gathering enough evidence to catch and charge the culprit over something like this is very, very hard.
’ She repeated her advice to keep everything, and told Kate to get back in touch if it escalated further.
The screens around the empty pond had been removed now, so Mick laid hoses to start refilling it.
At least the ducks – who’d been marooned on their little island for the past few days – were grateful, paddling back and forth in the slowly rising water.
But, looking at the sludge-brown liquid, stirred up even more than usual by the hoses, Kate couldn’t shake off the thought of poor Martina, lying underneath the wych elm all those years, unseen and ignored.
It somehow felt as if Trade Cottage itself had been violated, and was urging her to make some kind of restitution.
But what could she do? She had no way to compel Jamie to take a DNA test, and even if Martina’s own DNA was found on that sofa, it wouldn’t prove he was involved in her death.
Back in the study, her eye alighted on a second pile of papers she’d put aside as she’d separated out Jamie’s school reports.
There were no commemorative sports photos of Tessa, just a couple showing her dressed up for her school proms. She’d been pretty, but it seemed to Kate that her weight had yo-yoed more than was usual for a teenager.
She recalled Rosemary saying something about an eating disorder.
She wondered about that – at the very least, it hinted at a darker side to the sunny idyll of Trade Cottage.
She typed ‘Tessa Finch’ into her browser. Again, there were too many hits to be useful, so she narrowed it down with ‘commune + Wales’.
She was in luck. The very first link was to the website of a self-styled ‘intentional community’ called Fawr Carreg, situated in the Preseli Hills, Pembrokeshire.
She clicked on it. The home page showed twenty or so people gathered outside a large stone farmhouse – a mixture of adults and children, with a couple of dogs and half a dozen goats.
Tessa was holding one of the goats in her arms.
Kate scrolled down to the blurb below: We are diggers, dreamers, activists and educators.
But first and foremost, we are the stewards of this ancient land – 90 acres of beautiful pasture, woodland, orchard and stream.
We strive to work in harmony with its needs and rhythms, and to be sustainable and self-sufficient in all we do.
A ‘Donate Now’ button suggested they weren’t necessarily achieving the last of those aims.
Further pictures showed vegetable beds, polytunnels, more goats grazing in tiny fields, a coppiced hazel wood and a farmhouse kitchen with a huge communal table. It all looked stunningly beautiful – like a rugged version of Trade Cottage, perhaps.
She clicked on ‘Visit’.
We welcome visitors to Fawr Carreg, both to volunteer their labour and to learn from our community. We make a small charge to cover our expenses.
She was going to Wales, Kate realised. She was going to go and speak to Tessa.